Tag Archives: Folk Remedy

Kaadha: The One-For-All Remedy

Nationality: Indian
Age: 52
Occupation: Homemaker
Residence: Mumbai, India
Performance Date: 30/04/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Hindi

The Interviewer will be referred to as ‘I’, and the informant as ‘S’. Translations for Hindi words will be italicised and in parentheses. The Informant is a 52-year-old Punjabi mother, born and raised in North India.

I: Do you have any common notable remedies or medicinal recipes for a fever, maybe a flu?

S: Yeah, for virals! For flus, fever, cough, cold, we call it kaadha (decoction). It’s pretty generic… and everybody calls it kaadha.

I: Are there different recipes of kaadha, depending on where you go, who you ask—

S: Yeah, yeah, yeah! There’ll be different recipes, and I’m not really a master of them, but I used to make a lot of it when my daughter was younger. Now, today, I do not remember really the exact ingredients of what went into it, you know, which was the primary ingredient at which point of the recipe, but there used to be things like… dhaniya (coriander/cilantro) powder was for stomachache, and god-knows-what… no! Dhaniya powder was primarily for fever, but basically you have ginger—again, what goes into it is mostly heat-inducing ingredients, again, so you won’t have the cooling things going in there—so, primarily you’ll have ajwain (carom seeds, a very common ingredient in Indian foods and folk remedies), ginger, you’ll have dhaniya or dhaniya powder, long (cumin), cinnamon, tulsi (holy basil), haldi (turmeric), very importantly… a lot, depending on what the problem is and where you’re from. But, let’s say you take two glasses of water, you put it on to boil with all this stuff in it, all these spices and herbs, you put it to boil, and you allow it to boil till you reduce to quantity to about half on a slow flame, and you let it sit. Kaadha basically means, like, brewing, so you allow it to become a kaadha, like a brew, so you brew it enough to reduce the liquid to about half the quantity that you started with, and… cool it a little and then you add a dash of honey, because it’s very bitter and you give this to children too, and then you serve it. You have it, a few times a day, and it’ll help!

I: Did you learn this recipe from anywhere, that you can remember?

S: No, not really, it was, again, something we all kind of had in our childhoods, through our lives, so I learnt it from my mother. However, actually, there was this homeopathic doctor, Dr. [Name], he’s the one who guided me with some ingredients and varieties of kaadha, he streamlined the one that I would make, catered to my daughter, like, ‘oh, you add this, these are the primaries for fever, these are for stomachache,’ and whatever else. And… I also remember, I remember him telling me that with little ones, with children, when it comes to fever, you don’t give… immediately, like allopathy promotes that you immediately give the Crocin or Calpol when they hit, like, 99 (degrees) or 100, but he stopped me from doing that. He said that fever is very important, because you don’t want to treat the symptom, you want to treat the problem, and fever is your body’s way of fighting the problem. So, your body is heating up so much that the problem is being fought, being killed, but when you bring down the fever, you’re not allowing the body to fight. And, he said, basically, ‘kids can handle high temperatures far better than adults can,’ so he said, ‘no matter the temperature, do not panic, it doesn’t mean the same thing as an adult having the same temperature. You can stick to cold swabs and homeopathic stuff, but you don’t need to use allopathy unless it gets into… an emergency situation.’ It’s always worked for my daughter.

Analysis

Kaadha is a very common remedy in India, and there are many variations of it, depending on the illness, and the person making it and the region they’re from. Kaadha (काढ़ा) essentially means, as the informant states, brew, or literally, decoction, a medicine derived from plants. Here, the plants differ, but the main ingredients always have similar properties: they are heat-inducing. This belief in and use of heat-inducing ingredients can also be seen in, “Lapsi: The Common Cold Cure?” (http://uscfolklorearc.wpenginepowered.com/?p=59861), except this is a very common remedy, and usually makes use of more spices. Where ‘lapsi’ would provide relief and usually taste pleasant due to its fewer spices and bitter herbs, kaadha is known to be bitter and a pure decoction, the ‘pain’ part of ‘no pain, no gain’, and many Indians swear by its effectiveness in helping cure most common illnesses, including stomachaches, fever, the common cold, a cough, a sore throat, etc., even in children. It is a hot drink, had multiple times a day, just as the informant states, and since it is hot and also has spices in it, it would heat the body from the inside out, but it is even used to treat a fever: this is why it is often recommended by homeopathic doctors, and since it uses heat-inducing ingredients to fight off, well, a fever, it can be classified as a homeopathic remedy as well, all while being a classic, Indian folk medicine, that has been used and trusted for decades upon decades.

Arnica and Linaca Mixture for Healing

Nationality: Mexican American
Age: 48
Occupation: Human Resources manager
Residence: San Fernando Valley
Performance Date: 4/28/20
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

EA: Arnica is a tea it is like a natural herb, arnica and linaca and it is supposed to be like a a homeopathic remedy you can use for like swelling and just kind of instead of like a Neosporin type thing. It helps to heal a little bit better. Back then when they would make it when you know they did not have modern medicine so they would take it with like leaves or whatever and they would put it on and then they wrap it and then that helps with the cut of whatever you have. 

Interviewer: Did she say how she boiled it?

EA: Yeah she boiled it and lets it simmer for like a while on high heat and then she lowers he heat and lets it simmer. Ten minutes I think she said and it boils it and then you turn it off and then you just let it sit and  then that’s when it gets that vava, which is kind of like a vasiline type texture and then it just like sits there. 

Interviewer: That’s when you know it is done?

EA: Yeah, like a little thick.  

Context: EA is my mother mother who was born in Southern California, but whose parents are both from Mexico. The information taken from a casual conversation I was having with my mother about any folklore she had for me and my sister was also present. She was referring to an ointment that my aunt made for her son when he had a really bad insect bit and gave to us when our dog had a rash. 

Analysis

In Mexico, even know it is difficult in many places to see or either afford a doctor. This has given rise for the necessity of home remedies. Arnica is in many supplements and gels that are sold in pharmacies. Thus, showing the ability for homeopathic remedies to transfer to modern medicine and being legitimizd by being formally sold in stores. However, people would likely still feel that something like Neosporin is inherently more effective than something homemade when this is not inherently the case. Accordingly, when recommending these home remedies it is often accompanied with an anecdotal success story to prove it’s merit. would be It also shows the versatility of the homemade treatments because they are made with natural ingredients and how it can help your family and having advice when another person you care about is having a difficulty. 

Asian Pears with Honey Remedy

Nationality: South Korean
Age: 55
Occupation: Homemaker
Residence: Cerritos, CA
Performance Date: 4/10/17
Primary Language: Korean
Language: English

Background: Stella is a 55-year-old woman living in Cerritos, CA. She was born in Seoul and has lived in South Korea for the majority of her life until she moved here for college. She stays at home. Before that, she worked at a hair salon as a beautician. She is married and has two grown children.

 

Main piece:

So what do you usually do when you or your children are sick?

Stella: “I always always say eat some pears… Asian pears!.. with a little bit honey. It is cool… and feels good in mouth. It is soothing to throat and the best for when you have cold.”

Where did you learn this from?

Stella: “My mother, so your grandmother, tell me this all the time. It is old, old tradition.”

Does it work?

Stella: “Yeah! Always feels good. It has worked for generations and generations.”

Performance Context: I interviewed the informant over the phone, as she was in the Orange County area and I’m in Los Angeles. This folk remedy seems to originate from back when my mother was a child. She learned this from her mother and has passed it down to me.

My Thoughts: I love this home remedy – it reminds me of my childhood and maybe it’s also psychological, but this remedy always seems to work for me. I plan to pass this down to my children as well.

 

Russian Sinus Remedy

Nationality: Russian / American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: LA, CA
Performance Date: 03/05/15
Primary Language: Russian
Language: English, French, some Hebrew

The informant is a 19-year old student attending the University of California Berkeley. She is majoring in Media Studies and Journalism with a minor in Hebrew. She grew up in West Los Angeles with her two parents, immigrants from the Soviet Union. I mentioned that homeopathic remedies were a form of folklore and she told me about this remedy her mom taught her.

 

Informant: “I got colds a lot when I was a kid, so I remember this one very well. My mom used to take eggs, boil them and then take the warm boiled eggs—two of them—in a towel. You use two because they go on either side of your nose so that your sinuses get released. It’s super weird sounding and it looks funny too. But it works! It actually felt really really nice. It was super comforting.

Interviewer: “Wow, I would never think to do that! But it makes sense.

Informant: “Yea, well Russians had them, the eggs, because chickens were a thing they had. Even in the Soviet Union where there was so much poverty and people had almost nothing. They still had chickens! So I guess this was a way to alleviate sinus pressure when it was cold as hell and people would get sick.”

 

Thoughts:

What the informant said about eggs being something readily available to people in Russia during the time of the Soviet Union makes a lot of sense. Homeopathic remedies from different places often involve plants or food with similar properties, but that grow in different regions, native to whatever area the person giving the remedy is from. This says a lot about the nature of folklore, and once again reminds me of the film, Whose Song is it?, in the variety of folklore concerning one topic, or the variances of a particular piece of folklore.

 

A Natural Cure for the Cold

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: University of Southern California/St. Croix
Performance Date: 3/24/15
Primary Language: English

“Whenever I’m sick, I usually just have a couple teaspoons of coconut oil each day and feel much better afterward.” 

The informant, despite spending most of her time in Boston, grew up on the small island of St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Her dad still works there as a lawyer and she usually visits every Christmas and Spring Break when she’s out of class. After getting sick a few short weeks ago, she advised that I take some teaspoons of coconut oil to help knock the cold out. She explained that is has high levels of lauric acid which supposedly eliminate the coating of some viruses which makes them easier to be attacked by the immune system.

I asked her what made her think of something this random but she explained that it’s what people did when they got sick in St. Croix. Coconut farming is a huge part of life on the island and she also remarked that other parts of the coconut have many helpful healing qualities. I liked hearing about this remedy due to the fact that I think too many Americans are over dependent on antibiotics and unnatural substances to cure simple maladies. Something such as coconut oil is very natural and low cost and it was cool to hear that something so simple and unadvertised could help fix a common cold.